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“ Cloud shadows . . . creep from the waving wheat fields.” 
Page 14. 


®)Ci ^ 








50ickin3$ion » • • 
Butbor of ‘‘flbe fTcmp® 
tation of Ikatbarine (5rai5» ' ' 
* ‘Spring JBloseoms/' efc. 

(5~V^ (o~>^>-9 



Ipbilabelpbia 

Bmerican ^Baptist ipublication Society 
1420 Cbeetnut Sfreet 

JUDCCCXCVI 


.T355^ 



Copyright 1896 by the 

American Baptist Publication Society 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 

A Couple of Letters, 7 

CHAPTER II 

From Friend to Friend, 15 

CHAPTER HI 

The Work Begun, 24 

CHAPTER IV 

Gathered Threads, 33 

CHAPTER V 

Another Helper, . 40 

CHAPTER VI 

A Glad Reunion, 49 


5 



FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


CHAPTER I 

A COUPLE OF LETTERS 

The Yaller Hennery, 
Folksby Four Corners, 

New Hampshire. 

EAR Sister-in-law Mal- 
viNY : When you and 
Jonas made me that lit- 
tle meachin’ bit of a 
visit, — ’twan’t enough to 
be named anything but 
a call, — ^you said you 
was afeared you wouldn’t sleep nights after you 
got home, thinkin’ er me livin’ all alone in this ’ere 
great yaller house. You said, if you was me you’d 
take boarders, bothersome as they be, ’fore you’d 
go to bed with nothin’ human to depend on except 
a parrot and a cat. Now, I’m sendin’ you in this 
a letter from Mrs. Burke, she that was Miriam 
Morse, jest to ease your mind and keep you from 
bein’ broke of your rest ; though, to my mind, I’m 

7 



8 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


jest as safe with Poll and my cat as you be with 
your Jonas — sleepin’ so that tramps couldn’t wake 
him, and puffin’ so like a sawmill that all the bur- 
glar’s noises would be drownded by his snores. 

But that’s neither here nor there. Sence you 
married Jonas I ain’t been used to men folks 
reound, and so I am glad for my sake that Mrs. 
Burke didn’t ask to come while old Judge Burke 
was a wheezin’ his way out er the world. Not but 
what he was a very nice man, but feeble — hectic 
flush, and a cough to match. But if she’d a histed 
her little finger as a sign she wanted to bring him 
and the whole lot of his Burke relations, I should 
have kurchy’d low and welcomed ’em all, and run 
my feet off, I s’ pose, to wait on ’em too. Of course. 
I’d make the house stand on end for Miriam any 
day, for if it hadn’t been for her, you know, there 
wouldn’t have been any house, upside down or 
downside up, for me, nor Polly, nor yet for Thomas, 
the cat. She paid the mortgage when that old 
hunks of a Jenkins was goin’ to put me out ; and, 
live savin’ as I could, I ain’t never paid it back yit, 
and so she’s a perfect right to come and bring all 
creation, if she likes. 

But thank goodness, she’s cornin’ alone. I’d 
give all my old shoes if I knew she hadn’t changed 
a mite. I don’ know’s I can suit her now, with 
everything so shabby. I ain’t so young, nuther, as 
I was when she boarded here and taught the 


A COUPLE OF LETTERS 


9 


deestrict school nigh a dozen years ago. My, but 
she was a comfort then ; jest as pleasant and easy 
satisfied ! ’Twas she that said one day, when I 
was feedin’ my chickens, — I had a cacklin’ lot, you 
know, — “Why don’t you name this place. Aunt 
Nancy? It ought to be called the Yellow Hen- 
nery.” And I laughed with her, but afterward I 
thought it over and settled it in my mind it was a 
good name. ’Twas a yaller house, and it was a 
sort of a hen farm ; and besides, tho’ she didn’t 
know it, my beau that went to sea after we was 
engaged and never came back again, his name was 
Henry, and it kinder had a sort of an epitaphy 
sound to me, so I’ve just stuck to that name ever 
sence. 

But how I be runnin’ on ! I only meant to say 
you needn’t be scared any more o’ nights, and to 
tell you I was kinder scared myself for fear things 
that suited the little schoolma’am wouldn’t suit a 
lady that’s traveled all over creation. And yet I 
don’t believe all the countries and all the folks 
could really make Miriam Morse stuck up. I shall 
give her the spare chamber. S’ pose she’ll make 
me put the mattress top er the feather bed ; but I 
can stand that, though if I had to give up m.y 
feather bed, I shouldn’t know where to look for 
support. Mrs. Burke says — but I’ll just put in her 
letter, as it’s most time for milkin’, and my hand’s 
gettin’ kinder cramped and onsteady. When you 


TO 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


go to the next sewin’ meetin’, notice if they send 
in any new kinds of cake or pie, and send me the 
receipts. S’ pose Mrs. Burke will have lots of folks 
cornin’ and goin’, for she knows everybody at the 
Center, and it’ll never do for me to be ketched 
without a pie in the house. 

Wishin’ you and Jonas the same blessin’s. 

Your loving sister, 

Nancy Ann Smith. 

And the other letter read : 

Dear Aunt Nancy : Does the dear old yellow 
house that sheltered me when I taught my first 
school at the factory village in the valley keep a 
corner for me yet? And are you strong enough to 
take a tired woman in while she rests a little, and 
writes a little, and reads a little, and tries an ex- 
periment she has long desired to make ? 

“S’pose she’s going to write a new book,” said 
Jonas, who had listened in silence, as Malvina read 
the letter aloud. 

“ I don’ know, and ’tain’t much use s’posin’,” an- 
swered his wife, rather resenting the interruption. 

The rest of my family will be abroad perhaps for 
a year or more. I want to come alone and stay as 
long as ever I like, if I can do so without making 
life harder for you. Shall I bring some one with 


A COUPLE OF LETTERS 1 I 

me to share the house burdens, or would you prefer 
to find some one to help us there ? 

“ Guess Nancy Smith don’t want no finickin’ city 
help around. Nancy’s smart as ever to work, and 
there’s plenty of girls to be had, if she wants ’em, 
that won’t put on no airs nor turn up their noses 
at anything Nancy pervides.” And having de- 
livered himself once more, Jonas shifted a long 
and cumbrous leg to the opposite knee, and put 
his pipe back in his mouth. 

I want to come as soon as you can take me in, 
and I look forward to the weeks in the dear old 
place as a child, long at school, looks forward to 
vacation at home. 

“That don’t .sound stuck up a bit,” .said Malvina, 
folding up the sheet with great deliberation, “ and 
it’s a good thing for Nancy. If all you say about 
Mrs. Burke is true, the sooner she comes and the 
longer she stays the better, I should say.” 

“ Don’t remember what I said, Malviny ; but I 
was on the old place when she boarded there, and 
young thing as she was. I’d a been glad enough to 
go to .school, if she’d a let me in. I’d a liked to 
mind her too. She was that kind that everybody 


12 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


liked to do for her. And the children, they jest 
pestered Nancy’s life out hangin’ ’round. Couldn’t 
get rid of ’em ; must come in the morning to walk 
to school with the teacher, and must come at night 
to walk home with her. They littered the piazza 
all over with their posies, and were ready to fight 
one ’nuther to get nearest and take hold of her 
hand.” 

“S’ pose you felt that way too,” said Malvina 
severely. 

“ I own up I did. We big fellers was as bad as 
the little ones. And then she went away to her 
home in Boston, and fust we knew, she had a rich 
husband. Judge Burke, high-up family, and no end 
of money. Of course we all tho’t that was the end 
of her for Folksby Four Corners. But, no ; very 
fust place she took him was down here. ’Twas 
then that they got it out of Nancy that Jenkins was 
pesterin’ on her about that mortgage. 

“Then off they went to Europe, and there Mr. 
Burke died, and I did hear someway that putty 
much all his money went with him. But that 
couldn’t be, because she never dunned us from that 
day to this about that mortgage. I’ve heard of 
her teachin’ since, but reckon it couldn’t have been 
for money. Fact is, she was a schoolma’am born. 


A COUPLE OF LETTERS 


13 


I don’t believe they could keep her away if they 
wanted to, from the schools and the young folks. 
It’s jest natural for her to putter with ’em. Used 
to feel like a boy myself, old as I was, and I’d er 
told her every foolish thing I ever did that I das- 
sent tell nobody else. She seemed to know all 
about it ’fore you said it, Malviny.” 

“ So you told her about the mortgage,” said Mal- 
vina severely. “ Bein’ a man, wasn’t ye ashamed 
to ask help of a woman ? ” 

“No, I didn’t tell her. ’Twasn’t my mortgage. 
The house belonged to Nancy’s mother, father’s 
fust wife, and the mortgage was on it when she 
brought it into the family. Father would er lifted 
it if he could, and I’d er lifted it if I could, and I 
hope to some day if Nancy can’t. No, that wasn’t 
the thing I talked to her about.” 

“What then, I wonder?” said his wife, half 
jealous of any woman who could make her silent 
Jonas talk. 

“Well, mostly I talked about you, Malviny. 
We was jest beginnin’ to keep company, and I told 
her how clever and good-lookin’ and smart you was, 
and how much store I set by ye, and how awful 

’fraid I was ye wouldn’t have me ; and ” 

“That’s enough, that’s enough ; I shall never dare 


14 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


to see her,” said the little woman, blushing, yet 
well pleased. “ She ought to be there, by this 
letter, before many days.” 

“Reckon she’s there a’ ready,” said Jonas sen- 
tentiously. 

And he was right. The wide, clean chamber 
had an occupant, who patted the fat feather bed 
kindly, even while she saw it crushed and degraded 
to a place beneath the mattress, on which it had 
literally been puffed up every day for nearly a 
dozen years. 



CHAPTER II 


FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 



FEW days after Nancy 
Smith’s room received 
its new occupant, a letter 
was sent from it which 
was in part as follows : 


Dear Faithful 
Friend : It was a gra- 
cious and glorious fort- 


night that we passed together in that blessed retreat 
of yours upon the mountain side. 

There is about that house, under the overhanging 
shadow of the forest, something that sets it apart 
from all other dwellings. I feel, when there, not as 
if I had been called “ into a desert place apart,” 
but as if I had been allowed to climb, a little way 
at least, up a high mountain apart, where one 
might hope for revelations such as never come on 
lower levels of being. I never hear sung, “ Flee as 
a bird to your mountain,” that your hills do not rise 
before me ; and my soul answers, “ Oh, if I only 
could flee away and be at rest ! ” 

The place is wide and sunny and hospitable, it 

15 


1 6 FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 

seems to me like the vestibule to a holy place, an 
entrance to that great forest cathedral behind it 
where the green aisles stretch out, and the leafy 
draperies need only a wind-sweep to reveal many a 
dim chapel where the rocky altars are waiting, and 
where there is no escape from the conscious pres- 
ence of God. 

Whether I mean to do it or not, I do leave the 
world behind when I go there, and whether you 
know it or not, I believe you have so pervaded 
the place with your own life that your thoughts and 
views and feelings are in the very air we breathe. 

You know, old friend, when my husband went 
away, and the wide world seemed empty and dead, 
how slowly I came back to interest in life. The 
first stirrings of the old enthusiasm came to me up 
there, as I sat and watched the cloud shadows over 
your clover-clad valley, and saw them creep from 
the waving wheat fields beyond the river up to the 
higher slopes, climbing the lower hills, and higher 
still to the mountains, and then again drifting across 
the glory of scarlet maples and golden birches up 
to the deep green of the firs, then blending with 
the soft solemn gray of naked rocks, and sweeping 
at last up to the snow-clad summits of the farthest 
range. These soft clouds, passing solemnly over all 
the picture, in the stillness of the waning day, were 
not more real to me than the silent moving of a new 
spirit — I verily believe the spirit of God — over the 


FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 


17 


fair places, and the dark and dreary places in my 
soul. I could no longer look at life as ended, or 
feel free from responsibility or care for other lives. 
You see, dear friend, the arousal was in the very 
air, and your looks and words and life, that were 
given so freely to whatever needed them most, were 
right there to help nature in her kindly cure. 

It was most natural for me to turn my new life, 
for it was a new life, back into the channels that 
had been most interesting in my youth ; hence the 
young people, and the children, and the schools, 
and the plans for making better men and women 
and nobler citizen.s, these were the things that took 
possession of my mind. 

And you were so good to me. You wandered 
from city to city with me to see new schools, new 
systems, new plans, new methods of training for 
bodies and brains and souls. You had an eager 
.student in your hands, and your patience with my 
crude criticisms was the patience of a mother with a 
blind and impatient child. How you dragged again 
through books you had absorbed long ago ; how 
you stayed b}' me in teachers’ conventions and 
educational congresses, while I crowded ni}^ head 
with eveiy new theory of eveiy^ new professor. 
And through it all how gently and steadily you 
held to a theory of your own, that underlies, as I 
see, all the learning of the schools. Without a 
touch of cant or a word of preaching on your part, 


1 8 FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 

I yet got at your secret, and knew that while you 
believed in grasping all that could be known of the 
learned world’s ways of teaching and training 
minds, yet you counted no man or woman a 
teacher who did not care supremely for the heart 
and soul of the student. 

One day you said, and the words sank deep : 
“The end and object of all discipline is now, as it 
was eighteen hundred years ago, and as it was 
always — the end and aim of it all is life ; that 
they might have life and have it more abundantly.” 

You said also another time : “Every teacher in 
the land ought to hold her scholars, whether 
Sunday-school or week-day, in her heart, as if God 
had given her their lives for her shaping. She 
should think of them, not as remote and apart, but 
as ‘ these which thou hast given me ’ — as her own 
to train for him.” That sank dowm deep too, and 
all these talks and thoughts had their influence, and 
I resolved if ever I was led again to the teacher’s 
place, that in that spirit I would work. 

I had been toiling tow ard a specialty, longing for 
masterly and acknowledged excellence in some one 
department of stud}' ; but I began now' to stud)' 
students and graduates for signs of the “more 
abundant life.” I do not need to tell you what I 
found, for it is a road already mo.st familiar to you ; 
but I w'anted you to know' to what it has led me. 
you knew^ me as a child ; you knew^ m^' Ipve pf 


FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 


19 


books and the fascination study has for me. You 
know how I have sought and won the right to a 
place among educators in my own field, and that I 
might hope to do good, possibly distinguished 
work therein. But I have decided to decline all 
places that have opened to me, and for the coming 
months I am to be here, at this old homestead, out 
of my own world, and yet in a new world where I 
hope to find the life, or by God’s help to kindle the 
beginnings of life, in the hearts of those of whom 
I once could have said, “These which thou hast 
given me.” 

Lest you should wonder why I have chosen this 
spot as the field of my experiment, let me tell you 
that here are already some fellow-beings who are 
more or less, mostly less, my own. In this old 
house, called once in sport the “Yellow Henneiy,” 
I stayed as a young girl with the lonely old woman 
who is its mistress. You, beloved, are my consult- 
ing physician, and I am just beginning practice; 
so, women though we are, neither of us can suspect 
the other of gossip, or of opening up the evil any- 
where, save that we might help each other to over- 
come the evil with good. So I dare show you my 
diagnosis of Nancy Smith. 

The old house has partaken, as all homes do, of 
the characteristics of its mistress. It is all angles 
and sharp outlines. The broomstick in the corner 
jsp’t more upright than Nancy’s backbone, Sh^ 


20 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


proud of that bone too, and says “ most women 
have none worth mentioning.” She likes money, 
and if one thing makes her happier than to find a 
new way to get a dollar, it’s a new way to save it. 
There’s only one thing better in her eyes than to 
get something for less than “its wuth,” and that is 
to get something for nothing. 

In Nancy’s eyes the woman who can’t earn two 
cents to save her life is weak and to be pitied. But 
the woman who can’t save one cent if she gets two, 
and make the other buy as much as both, is to be 
despised ; she is not only weak, but wasteful and 
wicked. Nancy’s mother and grandmother saved 
in order to live. Nancy has lived in order to save. 
The farm came through her mother’s side of the 
house, and the mortgage was heavy at the first, and 
heavier when her father died, for he wouldn’t save 
and he would drink, and poor Nancy had to do 
the saving for the whole family. The half-brother 
Jonas was like the father, a kind and susceptible 
soul, but the years since I have seen him have 
given him a color such as comes only from looking 
“on the wine when it is red.” 

Nancy loves two things — money and myself ; 
she hates two thing.s — whisky and little children. 
No common white ribbon is good enough for her. 
She flaunts in Jonas’ red face a huge white satin 
rosette, and woe to the child that picks an apple 
from her side of the wall or a posy from her hedge. 


FROM FRIFXD TO FRI?:XD 21 

She never approaches the door but she throws her 
apron up over her arm, lest dogs or chickens or 
children come in sight, and she shoos all off alike, 
for they all alike mean to her only more dirt and 
more work and more trouble. 

Jonas lives in the next town, with a kind little 
wife, who yet can never forgive Nancy for owning 
the farm, and who believes if Nancy had loved her 
brother half as much as she did the acres, she 
would have let him bring his wife home, and have 
shared with them the house and the fields, instead 
of seeing her slave in an upstairs tenement, and 
Jonas get a shabby living at best from a half- 
learned and carelessly practised trade. However 
that may be, the man evidently was pretty thor- 
oughly shaken off by his old-maid sister as a lad, if 
for no other reason than that he was a child, and 
there are evidently bones enough left of their old 
family skeleton to account for the “ envy and malice 
and all uncharitableness” that is sprinkled through 
their seemingly friendly relation. 

But, notwithstanding this hard record, there is 
one redeeming and hopeful feature in all three. 
Nancy loves me. Malvina likes me because 
Jonas as a youth liked me, and tells her I could 
have made of him any sort I liked. I think her 
aching heart keeps a hope that even now he may 
be persuaded to give up the drink. But her liking 
for me is only equaled by her dislike of Nancy, 


22 


t^ROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


who feels an equal dislike of Jessie, Jonas’ only- 
child, a sweet little girl of four years, who is left 
with her grandmother whenever Jonas and Malvina 
come for their visits, because, as Malvina confided 
to me yesterday when I drove the pony over to 
see them, “ Nancy is so afraid the child will make a 
little dirt or a little noise, or touch some of her 
things, that the poor child is in constant terror of 
her sharp, ‘Now let them things be; why can’t 
children be brought up so’s to let things be? ’ ” 

“But why do you visit under such trying condi- 
tions ? ” I asked. 

“Why, I don’t know,” she answered, hesitating; 
“I really can’t scassly tell, only Jonas, he gets a 
kind of a homesick hankerin’ once in a while for a 
run over the old place. By good rights it ought to 
come to Jonas or to little Jess after Nancy ’s done 
with it. She ain’t nary chick nor child to leave it 
to, and she wasn’t never any hand to favor the 
heathen, .so she won’t leave it to the Missionar\" 
Society. Sometimes I think the reason she spites 
Jessie so is because she’s afraid she’ll step into her 
old shoes. But goodness me, she needn’t be afraid. 
Aunt Nancy’s going to hold on like all possessed. 
Fact is, .she don’t out and out approve of a heaven 
where anything, even if ’tis salvation, is given 
away. She thinks we poor sinners ought somehow 
to aim it. It seems kinder wa.steful to her to be 
offerin’ it round so free.” And then she added, as 


FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 


23 


if it were a conclusive argument: “ I know Nancy 
ain’t goin’ to be in no hurry to get into a place, if 
she can help it, where they let the children play 
round, as I’ve read they can in heaven.” 

And this, you see, dear friend, is the family, and 
these are some of the lives that ten years ago might 
have learned the blessedness of giving, yet here 
they are, bound and narrowed still by that awful 
hunger for grasping and getting that eats into the 
very heart of “the life” that He desired for his 
own. 



CHAPTER III 


THE WORK BEGUN 

OM down the mountain 
side came soon after- 
ward an answer to Mir- 
iam’s letter, which ran 
in part as follows : 

My Dear Miriam : 
While your long letter 
was a pleasure to me, it 
was not a surprise. Al- 
though we did not talk 
it out, I think I knew sympathetically which way 
your thoughts were tending. I would not like to 
decide for you whether it were better for you to go 
back into the past and gather up the fragments of 
unfinished work, than to push forward into new and 
possibly wider fields. If it is true that your life’s 
discipline has fitted you to do some broad educa- 
tional work in a higher sphere, if what you have to 
give is more needed in a college than it is in the 
primary school, then, of course, you should be very 
careful to make no mistake in your choice of work. 



THE WORK BEGUN 


25 


But it may be that in those early days you were 
only intended to plant and not to water, or to 
watch, or to reap the fruits of your planting. And 
it may be that your next work is planting seed in 
some wider field, where the fruitage should be of a 
nobler and more intellectual character. 

But the fact that in the silence of self-communion 
you seem to have been led by God to the sense of 
responsibility for the results of the old work, has 
weight with me, and I am inclined to think that in 
the simple field that you have chosen you are where 
you have been called or sent. 

You are certainly right when you take for granted 
that I would be in fullest sympathy with the under- 
lying idea that has made you take this step. I do 
most earnestly believe that those persons who by 
the providence of God are brought into such rela- 
tion to us that we have the charge, even for a time, 
of the development of their characters, have a claim 
upon us which the outside world has not, and that 
we have a right to interpret for ourselves that pas- 
sage, “ I pray . . . for them which thou hast given 
me . . . that they also ... be with me where 
I am.” 

These who come to us as our pupils are given to 
us ; they are our own ; and Christ, when he prayed 
that his own might be with him where he was, must 
have meant that they might be the sharers of what- 
ever blessings came to him. So we, if through our 


26 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


life’s training we have been given visions of his 
goodness, glimpses of his grace, gifts of knowledge, 
especially spiritual gifts, to show us how to live and 
how to love and how to work, are brought by these 
into an advanced and beautiful place ; and where 
we are we have a right to ask that those who have 
been given us shall come. And we have a duty to 
work for them and with them until they shall come 
out into the place where life is a sweet and noble 
and helpful thing. 

If eveiy teacher of a Sunday-school, or of chil- 
dren and young people everywhere, accepted her 
charge in that spirit, and worked to bring her own 
character into a place toward which she could draw 
others, education would take a new aspect, and the 
world would move steadily forward from the dread- 
ful places where the majorities now groan in suffer- 
ing or grovel in sin. 

Of course it is the personal influence, the action 
of one soul upon the next, that is going to tell. I 
think you have chosen the right way. You will 
live among these whom once you knew. You 
know what they once were ; you will find out what 
they have come to be. I wish I might be with you, 
but I shall certainly follow step by step. You have 
undertaken a little parish of your own. I know 
you will not fail through thinking that the only use 
of a parish is to give the preacher a chance to 
talk. I know that your work is to be wrought by 


The Center was a tlourishiiig town 

Page 26. 






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the work begun 


your life rather than your words. I believe you will 
not fall into the mistake of impressing your old pu- 
pils with the fact that you will feel that it is your 
special business to do them good. There is .some- 
thing in human nature that would turn away, even 
from the angels in heaven, if they came with the 
announcement of a mission or of a purpose to labor 
for our good. 

There is a kind of spiritual strategy that is at the 
same time the height of simplicity. The secret of 
influence is here. Do we love people enough to 
make us desire that they shall share all the joy of 
being good and all the joy of doing good ? Do we 
love them enough to really desire to give them of 
our own po.ssessions — i. c., to open their eyes that 
they may see what we see ; to fill their hands with 
that which we value — and do Ave care enough to 
take trouble to this end ? In other words, what 
you hav^e to do is to love your neighbor as yourself, 
and then whatever you do, being the outgrowth of 
that loving, will reach the other lives with the power 
of love ; and, my dear friend, there is no other 
power that is going to reach them anywhere. 

But I only intended to congratulate you and say 
Godspeed, and instead, I am doing the very thing 
I warned you against : that is, making you wait 
while I preach to you, instead of sending you a 
little love message, that would act like a blow of the 
mallet to the ball on the croquet ground, upon 


28 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOL 


which you have just begun a new and very fascinating 
game. Forgive me ; I have talked too much. 

When you are weary, “ flee as a bird to your 
mountain,” and you will find ever the same warm 
welcome and ever the same true friend. 

Folksby Four Corners stood three miles from the 
Center, and the Center was a flourishing town with 
strong ambitions cityward. The winding river that 
ran peacefully between the business portion, knowm 
as the East Side, and the residence portion, known 
as the West Side, went wandering on at the foot of 
the maple-crowned hills, and then between pleasant 
meadow lands and railroad embankments to Four 
Corners, where its gathered volume poured itself 
over the rocks with a force that made the water 
power for two or three shambling and ugly cotton 
mills. 

Here in the valley near the mills crossed at right 
angles the old stage road between Lumberton and 
Boston, and the valley road that followed the river 
from Folksby to the flourishing city of Waterford, 
thirty miles away. Though the Corners were at the 
cross-roads, yet it was the mills that made the Cor- 
ners. Back from the village, along the country 
roadsides and on the nearer hills, stood some smart 
villas, some old mansions, and more old farm- 


THE WORK BEGUN 


29 


houses, shaded by branching elms, all homes that 
stood there before the factory days. The Yellow 
Hennery was one of these, and like its more pre- 
tentious neighbors, it had always held itself some- 
what aloof from the cheap and shabby tenement 
houses and the cottages hardly better than cabins, 
which clustered about the mills in the valley. Down 
there they didn’t even speak of this once lovely 
spot as the Valley, but as the Hollow. The mills 
were called the Hollow mills. The residents were 
simply the Hollow folks, and the school where 
Miriam Morse had had her first experience was the 
Hollow school. It had its little quota of pupils 
from mansion and villa and farmhouse ; another 
group, whose fathers were overseers or operators in 
the mills ; and its sprinkling of Hibernian and 
French Canadian children, whose parents stood at 
the looms or the great carding and spinning ma- 
chines all day, and sent the boys and girls to school 
only while they were too small to be safe at the 
smaller tasks which even the children may secure. 
On Sunday the Hollow people, or perhaps we 
should say the girls and women among them, went 
to some one of the churches or Sunday-schools at 
the Center, while their brothers went fishing and 
their fathers went to sleep over their pipes. On 


30 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


Monday morning the mill took the older people 
and the brick schoolhouse, standing high up on a 
sand bank on the outskirts of the village, with never 
a tree or a shrub about it, took the children, who, 
when school was out, unless they followed the 
teacher home, took their way back to the cabins in 
the valley, while the teacher climbed the hill by the 
road, fragrant with the sweet fern of the pastures, 
to the old yellow farmhouse under the elms. 

A more insignificant spot, or one apparently less 
hopeful for a humanitarian effort than the Corners, 
could scarcely be found. And yet in the light of 
her purpose, the question of whether such people 
in such a place were at all worth the giving of one’s 
self never seemed to enter Miriam’s mind. Some 
of these souls were those that had at one time “been 
given” into her hands, and intent upon finding and 
coming in touch with them again, her life at the 
Yellow Hennery began. It was eighteen months 
later that she wrote : 

Dearheart : I came here, as you know, when 
the leaves were putting on their first fresh feathery 
green. Now the winter is over and gone and the 
second summer is waning. Already “ the life is 
gone from the greenness.” I saw a red bough flung 
pqt this niorning from a maple tree, all green sav^ 


THE WORK BEGUN 


31 


that one ciimson banner, flaunting in my face as a 
promise of the autumn glory that I am coming to 
share with you in the early September days. 

Though I have not sent you many letters as the 
months went by, I have written them all the same, 
and I mail you to-day the book that holds them 
all, that when I come the story may be told and we 
be able in our thought to go forward and not back. 
I shall want you to tell me if you think the months 
have been well spent, for the old habit of coming 
to you for approval is as strong as the other habit 
of my life, of coming to you for inspiration and 
courage and hope. 

And on the low invalid couch, turned toward the 
sunset, the friend, from whom life was slipping 
slowly and sweetly away, read the story of the days 
whose fruitage was “ a more abundant life ” to many 
a careless soul. 

She was a rare little creature, this dainty, white- 
haired recluse, set aside from the world’s rush and 
clamor, yet so vital, so sympathetic, so intense and 
tender in her spiritual life, that those who knew her 
best called her the “ Heart of the Hills.” They 
wrote to her as Greatheart, Sweetheart, and Dear- 
heart, according to their own nearness to her life, 
and it did indeed seem as if she had grown so like 
her Lord that the “strength of the hills” was hers 


32 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


also. Certain it was that strength and comfort went 
out from her to all who came within her reach. 
Yet, as she read on through the twilight, and later 
by the light of the shaded lamp, if she recognized 
that these were records of the fruits of the spirit 
she had taught, she thought of herself as only one 
more “ broken and emptied vessel for the Master’s 
use made meet” by the wondrous lovirg-kind- 
ness that let her life, crippled and feeble and old, 
yet be a channel for his tenderness and strength. 



CHAPTER IV 


GATHERED THREADS 


HAVE gathered together 
a portion of my little 
flock,” said the story, 
under a date some 
months after Miriam’s 
arrival, “ and a rather 
sorry and fleece-robbed 
flock it is. It is pitiful 
to see how a lamblike 
gentleness and friskiness 
that marked their childhood has given place to the 
harassed looks and weary ways that show how life 
has hurt them even in these few years. It has been 
a work of more time and difficulty than you would 
suppose, just to find their names, and whom they 
married, and their several occupations, and in 
which street they live, and how they have prospered. 
All that I got readily enough, through Nancy, who 
interjects her own comments and criticisms and 
warnings as she goes along, showing who are ‘ well- 



33 


34 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


to-do nice folks,’ and who are ‘ wuth noticin’,’ and 
who ‘don’t amount to shucks.’ Careful as I tried 
to be, I think the sharp old creature suspects me 
of a wish to be of service to these people, for she 
spares no pains to let me know what nonsense it 
seems to her to spend, or, as she calls it, to ‘ pay 
out anything on folks that have always ben as 
they be, and are always goin’ to be as they be,’ no 
matter how one helps. 

“ The ministers have aided me a bit too, so that 
I know in which branch of the fold to find those 
who are church-members, and after a Sunday or 
two of half-timid greetings in the vestibule, have 
driven or walked up to the Henneiy, and made me 
a little formal and grown-up call. As to the others, 
in my long walks about the country roads and in 
the village, I have found it convenient to drop in 
to rest at most of their houses, which Nancy says 
have more children than they have anything else, 
and she seems to think each innocent child is lying 
in wait to give me measles, or the scarletina, or the 
whooping cough. 

“ Poor Nancy ! No mother hen with an adopted 
duckling could watch more anxiously than she 
watches as I plunge into the poverty and sickness 
about her — conditions which she has chosen to be- 


GATHERED THREADS 


35 


lieve were ‘not wuth mindin,’ or the result of the 
twin evils, whisky and children, either one of which 
is, to her mind, enough to ruin a home. 

“As I said, it did not take long to learn the out- 
side life of these who, once my own, did not know 
that my heart carried for them any responsibility, 
and did not feel that on my life they had any 
special claim. But to come to know them on the 
inside again ; to learn what they really are and 
what has made them so ; to find out their outer 
and inner needs ; to come again to be the friend of 
two score people, — so close a friend that they trust 
and love me again, — has been a hard year’s work. 
In it I have, by being much in their homes in time 
of sickness or trouble, by bringing them often to 
see me, and always taking time to let them talk, by 
writing to those at a distance, by many and many 
a quiet hour with those who wanted sympathy or 
love, by a right hand of help when help was 
needed, by counsel and prayer when that was 
better than clothing or food ; by one or all of 
these, and eveiy other way that wits could devise, 
come to know them all once more ; not to simply 
know things about them, but to know them as 
friend knows close and helpful friend. 

“ When you have read so far I can feel that your 
c 


36 FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 

heart begins to ask me for results. Is Nancy right, 
and the labor and time and money thrown away? 
I feel so sometimes when I realize that I have really 
accomplished so little. 

“I have had time to love them, that is all ; 
leisure to think of them, to plan for and with them ; 
just to be their everyday common friend. And it 
was all they needed, most of them, to ■ make life 
blossom into real sweetness and blessing. I can 
never in words give you any idea of what changes 
it has made. There was Barney Rooney, the least 
promising of the lot, a roly-poly little Hibernian, 
with a rollicking brogue and no end of mischief in 
him, and worse, the capacity for being a bully when 
he had a drop too much, which happened quite too 
often. When I found him he had just lost his 
place as teamster for the mill, and was drinking 
hard and bullying the life out of his wife, who was 
the gentle Kitty McGuire, in the same class with 
him at school — only she had her lessons and he 
hadn’t He used to torment her in fun before he 
had grown big and brutal, and capable of torment- 
ing her in earnest Poor thing ! he was leading 
her a terrible life, and she only clung to him for the 
sake of their little crippled boy, a second Barney, 
as like as possible what his father once was. 


Gathered threads 


3; 


“ Much against Nancy’s prejudices I persuaded 
her to let Kitty come and help us about the house, 
and I told her I was going to take into my own room 
the sunny-hearted, suffering little fellow. I knew 
she would tolerate him for my sake, and his mother 
would care for him, and the wee laddie couldn’t 
get about to handle things, and I somehow felt his 
gentle helplessness would work grace in Nancy’s 
soul ; and with the dear Lord’s help it did. It 
would have done your heart good to see it going 
on. At first she only looked at him and loathed 
him as if he were a toad, and wouldn’t touch him, 
and thrust things at him at arm’s length, and — 
well, I cannot tell it — but the tears have come to 
my eyes often as I watched it He just loved her 
from the first, and now she loves him, and buys 
toys and dainties for him, and calls herself a fool 
for wasting good money, ‘and on a furriner too,’ 
and then straightway loves him only the more. 
This I mention as first-fruits, for really Aunt Nancy 
was the least hopeful soul among them all. Once 
little Barney was worse, and I had a great city 
specialist up to see him. Only an operation would 
save him, and with that, if successful, he might 
grow up straight and strong. For days he lingered 
by the gates of death, and then I knew the depths 


38 FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 

of Nancy’s poor old hungiy heart. As he crept 
back to life she sent for Jessie, that Barney might 
not be lonely, but might see the merry face of 
another little child. And Jonas and Malvina came 
too, and it looks to me as if they would stay now ; 
and Nancy sits by the hour at Barney’s bedside, 
and makes a lap big enough for Jessie and Barney s 
woolly dog, and Jessie’s picture-book and a big rag 
doll. That is what I call conversion number one. 

“ As for Barney, who was rather inclined to 
resent the schoolma’am’s offering work and shelter 
to his wife, and wasn’t going to be managed by a 
woman, he came to his senses when the little lad 
was nigh to death, and hasn’t touched a drop of 
liquor since. Edward Knowles, little Ned, the mill- 
owner’s son, whose wide white collar Barney took 
such pleasure in pulling awry in their frolics at the 
school recess — Ned, who is his father’s partner now 
in the great paper manufactory at the other end of 
the town, has made Barney the proud driver of a 
team of big brown horses, so that he not only has 
better habits, but better wages, and a better place, 
inasmuch as Ned has him under his own eye, and 
has promised me to see that the boisterous, volatile 
nature gets companionship away from the saloon. 
Ned is my right-hand man. He came to me 


GAT H ER K 1 ) T 1 1 R K A I )S 


39 


almost as soon as 1 arrived, and when 1 saw what 
Christian parentage, happy marriage, and prosper- 
ity had wrought for him, I gradually opened to 
him my thought for the others ; and he has proved 
a co-worker indeed. He married Bertha Watson, 
one of two lovely sisters, the daughters of a re- 
tired merchant living in a pretty villa near Ned’s 
early home. Her only sorrow' w'as the death of her 
}’ounger sister, Kate. Roth w’ere my pupils, and 
Ned’s w'ife, as sw^eet and conscientious a woman as 
she w^as a girl, is heart and soul w'ith him and with 
me in the acceptance of the idea of our responsi- 
bility for those w'e have knowm and can influence. 
We have had many a lovely talk and plan as we 
have driven about the hills behind her wiiite pony. 
She is renewing her aquaintance with other old 
schoolmates, as well as with Barney and his wife.” 





CHAPTER V 


ANOTHER HELPER 

HIS morning Bertha told 
me of the beautiful life 
and happy death her 
younger sister’s were. 
‘When she died,’ she 
said, ‘ the fortune she 
would have had came 
to me. Ned has enough 
and, as I had my own 
share of my mother’s 
estate, I have not really 
needed it. I have been 
t h i n k i n g — and N ed 
agrees with me — that it would be lovely to use some 
portion of it for those schoolmates who have had 
no chance in life. After all, we schoolmates were 
more or less like one family, and Kate would have 
been so eager to share such plans as yours that I 
like to feel she is helping through what she has left 
behind.’ 

40 



ANOTHER HELPER 


41 


“ At this my heart gave a great throb of thanks, 
for only that morning I had been talking with 
Arthur Burton, whose widowed mother supported 
him by sewing while he was a child, and whose 
heart and mind had always turned toward the 
foreign mission field, he said, since when a boy I 
gave him books to read that opened that life to him. 
All these years he has stifled his longing and sup- 
ported his mother by his position in a business house. 
Now that his mother was gone, his heart turned 
back to his chosen work. He had known Kate 
Watson in school ; and later, when, though they 
were hardly old enough for love, he had yet 
thought her the sweetest of girls ; and the last time 
they met she had told him that she too had often 
thought of that life in heathen lands as the life she 
would most desire. He had gone away, and during 
his absence she had died. Could it be she was now 
to send him into the field that had been denied to 
herself? 

“ I talked it all over with Bertha, and it was 
arranged that Arthur should be made free at once 
to do his Master’s work, and that the plan should 
be so wrought out that there need be no sense of 
obligation and no burden of future debt. 

“And then we talked of others in the old group 


42 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


of children whose lives were moving on under sore 
struggle and need, and Bertha said : ‘ Your coming 
to us has opened up such a new world, Mrs. Burke. 
We see things in such new light, and all life has 
widened and deepened for us. Ned was saying 
only yesterday that before you came we were be- 
coming absorbed in getting and having and enjoy- 
ing ; now we seem really to be living. I have 
written to Belle Harcourt,’ she added, ‘ and told her 
all about it, and she is going to write you.’ 

“And Belle has written. Ah, she was a girl of 
power — brilliant, beautiful, vital, sure to influence 
many for evil or for good, a leader of all the chil- 
dren of her class, a trial to her teacher, so naughty 
to-day, so penitent to-morrow. Her father was a 
wealthy merchant in Boston, but the wild little 
thing was thought to be better off in her grand- 
mother’s imposing old home on the hill above the 
Hennery, from which she descended daily upon the 
Hollow School, conquering and to conquer, rebel- 
ling and repenting in the .same breath ; but she was 
the child who lingered around the young teacher 
for the last kiss at night, and answered it with such 
a hug as showed the warmth of affection in the 
wayward little heart. 

“Well, Belle’s father lost all his fortune, and the 


ANOTHER HELPER 


43 


young lover no longer wanted the poor girl. She 
became a teacher, and built up in a Western city a 
successful and fashionable school. Now she wrote 
back to me, calling me her one dear teacher, .say- 
ing : ‘ I always knew we could not be lost to you, 
that you would find us again, and I for one feel as 
if I had found the only real, loving friend of my 
childhood. Father didn’t know what to do with 
me, mother was too busy and too gay to have me, 
and grandmother was only happy when I was at 
school, safe with you ; and to tell the truth, I was 
only happy then myself Now grandmother is gone, 
and the old house stands vacant ; I wish I could 
run away and live in it while you stay at the 
Corners. But I come back to you in spirit just a 
bigger child. I work now like a small whirlwind, 
just as I used to play. I have a thriving school ; 
but great as the work is, it has lacked something 
to make it great enough to tax all my powers. 
Now you have supplied the lack. The whole work 
has seemed so superficial — girls here now, gone 
next term ; others in their places, gone too in a few 
months. Now I have taken your idea. The.se 
young souls once mine are always mine. They are 
to live forever, and are “given to me” to make 
them as lovely and noble and great as they can be. 


44 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


Henceforth my work has new meaning and de- 
mands of me all that is highest and best’ 

“And then Belle went on to say : ‘ Do you know, 
dear Mrs. Burke, that one of our old class is here, 
that pretty Nellie Reed, whose father drank so 
heavily and whose mother had such a sweet, sad 
face. I saw her in the street cars, and knew and 
spoke to her, though I did not think she seemed 
glad to see me. She did not tell where she lived 
or ask me to come to see her. But among my 
teachers there is a devout and lovely girl, a mem- 
ber of the order of The King’s Daughters, who 
visits in the hospitals, and there she found our poor 
Nellie again, just getting up from an illness brought 
on by overwork. As my teacher was reading to 
her, she chanced to mention my school, and the 
poor girl asked if she knew me, and if she would 
ask me to come and see her. 

“‘I went, and my heart ached for her. She 
wanted to tell me that her life had been good and 
true, but she was so very poor that she was ashamed 
to tell me of her miserable lodging when we met. 
She came here as a companion for a lady, who 
brought her with her once after a visit in the East, 
and left her with not even enough money to get 
home. 


ANOTHER HELPER 


45 


“‘Now, dear Mrs. Burke, my school is in need 
of another caretaker and nurse in illness. Nellie 
says that her mother is eking out a scanty living at 
the Folksby Center by sewing and nursing, and 
that she pines for her child all the time. Can you 
not send her to me? I will take Nellie to my 
home when she is better, and she shall find her 
mother there to nurse her back to health. There 
is work enough of a kind not beyond their strength, 
and I shall not only be beginning to care for my 
pupils on the new principle, but I shall be doing 
my share of the loving and serving, and helping to 
their highest and best those who have a common 
claim upon each other, because they were all be- 
loved by you. 

I can never go back,’ she wrote, ‘as you have 
done, to gather up the dropped stitches or the 
broken threads, but I will try hereafter to so do my 
blessed task that of those whom he has given me, 
none shall be plucked out of my hand. ’ 

“ I wish I could photograph for you the joy in 
the patient, aged face of Nellie’s mother when we 
told her the plan for their future life. ‘Why, do 
you know,’ she said, ‘when my timid little Nell 
was at school, she just worshiped afar off this 
bright, beautiful, well-dressed Belle Harcourt, and 


46 FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 

if Belle spoke to her or smiled on her, she was 
happy all day. And now to think that she will live 
in the same house with her, and that I shall be 
once more with my child ! Really, God is better to 
me than 1 deserve.’ 

“The day has been perfect without, and within a 
large company of those who, having given them- 
selves to the Master, would now give themselves to 
his church. Among these was one young soul so 
burdened and harassed with poverty and hard 
work and pain and care that life had seemed only 
the theatre of divine hatred instead of the channel 
of God’s love. But through the human love that 
longed and strove to lift her burden, suddenly God’s 
love shone, and the heart, radiant with gratitude 
and penitent for all repining, had pa.ssed into the 
waters of peace. 

“She was just a plain, quiet girl, as in the old 
schooldays, v ith sad eyes and work-browned hands. 
Her name is Frances White. Only the young 
teacher knew what was in her in the childish, silent 
days, when she ran fast from lessons to work for the 
invalid mother and the younger children, of whom 
the house was full — knew how early she rose, how 
hard she toiled, how she watched her chances to go, 
even for a day, into the mill as a ‘ spare hand ’ ; or 


ANOTHER HELPER 


4 / 


what a wrench it was to her, a child of thirteen, to 
give up school altogether ; from early dawn, five 
o’clock in summer, till eight at night, and year in 
and year out, she toiled that the little wage might go 
for those she loved best, who were, as she used to 
say sadly, ‘too little to love her back, alas !’ No 
one ‘ loved her back ’ but the young teacher, and as 
the dreary years ran on and brought the teacher to 
her again, the God who seemed to have forsaken her 
drew near also, and there were, little by little, a light- 
ening of tasks, occasional pleasures, medicine and 
treatment and nursing for the crippled sister, change 
from the cabin in the Hollow, where they could 
never escape the noise of the mill, to the great, 
wide, old house of Belle Harcourt’s grandmother 
on the hill ; and, more than that, Ned Knowles has 
made work for the brothers, for whom, toil as she 
would, their sister could never ‘ make a chance.’ 

“ And now, Belle, her old schoolmate, has written 
to Mrs. Burke : ‘ I want the old house opened ; I 
want to come to it when I will for a rest. I want 
Frances White, my dear, quiet classmate, — who was 
too honest to whisper to me my lessons when I 
didn’t know, but would steal up the lonely road to 
grandmother’s to coax me to let her help me learn 
them after dark, — I want her to go there and live 


48 FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 

and keep a home nest warm for me, and to read 
and study and enjoy life to her heart’s content 
The boys must live there with her, for I learn 
Frank White is going to be a physician. I mean 
to get rich with my school and found a hospital 
some day, and he shall have charge of it on condi- 
tion that he stays on my old place and sees that 
his sister does no work. Some day I’ll open a 
branch school there, and she shall have charge of 
all the sons and daughters of her old schoolmates 
that we can induce to come. Mrs. Burke shall be 
the guardian angel of the school, and I will be the 
avenging angel, punishing every one all around 
who has given its sweet house-mother a care.’ 

“Was it any marvel that in all this wondrous 
goodness she saw God, or that when Frank, her 
best-loved brother, gave himself to the church on 
that radiant Sunday, and beforehand told her of 
it, she said meekly : ‘ I have tried to serve him ; I 
have wondered why I always displeased and made 
it impossible for him to give me anything I wanted, 
but now I understand. It has been only love all 
the way, Frank. He has just been getting this 
wonderful rest ready for me all the time, and now 
I cannot wait to show I love him back by becoming 
one with his people too.’ ” 


CHAPTER VI 


A GLAD REUNION 


O the tide of blessing swelled 
and grew, and wayward 
boys came back to better 
ways, led by the strong 
hand of the three or four 
noble boys and men who 
rallied around Miriam, 
making it their service to 
seek, to win, and to pro- 
tect Weaiy, overworked 
omen were rested by 
girls who had grown to 
noble womanhood and 
moved away far from the Hollow, but who only 
needed to be told how to take up these new threads 
of Christian kindliness and help. Hard hearts little 
by little were softened ; friendless souls woke to the 
glory of having a friend. 

“When the Eastertide came, late this year, I told 
Aunt Nancy I wanted to have an Easter reunion. 

49 



50 


FROM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


Though she asked me if the plan was not a little 
‘ High Churchy,’ she consented to help me all she 
could. She said that some would not come if I 
called it an Easter party ; but they did. And when 
I said to one of the ministers that I wanted it on 
that day because it seemed to me as if the Christ 
we lov^ed had seemed dead to so many of these dear 
old pupils of mine, the tears stood in his eyes, and 
he said as he wrung my hand, ‘ God bless you ; I 
wish such parties might be multiplied in every par- 
ish in the land.’ 

“It was indeed a lovely time. I called it ‘The 
Hollow School Reunion,’ and invited everybody 
who went to the school that summer I was there, to 
come with their children and their friends. We 
trimmed the old schoolroom Avith evergreen, and 
made the old place bright with the treasures they 
brought from the wood. 

“ I had asked my boys to take their old seats, but 
their long legs wouldn’t go under the children’s 
desks. Half a dozen stalwart fellows sat on the 
top of the desks, and as the girls squeezed into the 
seats, more than one of them put her rosy-cheeked 
baby up before her. Nancy was there too, holding 
tightly Avith one hand a small Irishman who stood 
very straight, and in the other a small girl named 


A GLAD REUNION 


51 


Jessie, and under one arm the woolly dog that 
Barney wanted to bring, and under the other the 
old rag doll that Jessie could not leave behind. 

“ ‘ I look like a ridicklous old goose,’ she said, 
smiling right and left, ‘ but I don’t know how to 
help it, I declare. Everything’s all end fustward 
up to our house ever since them children come and 
took charge of the Yaller Hennery.’ Jonas was 
there too, and Malvina, who tried to draw Miriam’s 
attention to Jonas’ coat, in the lapel of which was 
the companion of Nancy’s white rosette. Malvina 
had proudly decorated him therewith, for he had 
kept his pledge a year. 

“ There was an Easter anthem sung, and a few 
speeches made, one by a young business man, who 
told them he felt as if Mrs. Burke’s old scholars 
ought to be a sort of profit-sharing corporation, 
each looking out for all the others. For his part, 
he would try to see that every idle man or boy who 
wanted work, and was willing to learn, had a chance 
to do a fair day’s work for a day’s fair wage. 

“ Another scholar, in one of his letters, said he 
could not meet with them, but he would be a large 
donor to a sick fund and a distre.ss fund for those 
who were unable by reason of sickness to do the 
work that was provided. 

D 


52 


I'KOxM HOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


“Another letter, from a rich woman, proposed 
that they unitedly see to it that the education of 
the children of that class should be the responsibil- 
ity of all. 

“ Belle Harcourt’s old home was offered in a 
warm-hearted letter to Miriam as a possible school 
or refuge in future for those who needed rest ; and 
as one added, for orphan children. Here Nancy 
rose to her feet, rag doll, woolly dog, and all, while 
little Barney and Jessie hung to her gown on either 
side, and said : ‘ I ain’t much for speakin’ in meet- 
in’; I ain’t never ben used to it. It takes backbone, 
and latterly I don’t seem to hev no backbone to 
speak of ; but if it’s children or chickens to be took 
care on — Jonas and Malviny’s agreed — there’ll 
always be the Yaller Hennery.’ And she sat down 
in spasmodic embarrassment, while Barney shouted, 
‘Glory to God! Three cheers for Miss Nancy! 
Faith, and if it’s right in the middle of the meetin’, 
I must say it’s Miss Nancy that’s first at last, if she 
was behind before.’ 

“ Then when the excitement quieted down a little 
Miriam said gently : ‘ We have called it an Easter 
reunion, old friends. The Easter joy is in it so far, 
and only so far, as the spirit of the Christ we love. 
Come with me to the old home that is waiting for 


A GLAD REUNION 


53 


US with its welcome cheer, and let us all remember 
that by sharing life and love, and all that love brings 
or gives, we may have his life and have it more 
abundantly.’ 

“ And then they went, old and young, rich and 
poor, and little children, up the road between the 
blossoming hedgerows to feast and frolic and talk 
through the waning afternoon in the wide rooms 
and on the lawn of the Yellow Hennery. Barney 
carried his little son in his arms and Jonas carried 
Jessie, but Nancy Ann strode on before to see that 
the fires were bright and ‘ the pies ’ in plenty, and 
all unconsciously she clasped against her bosom wee 
Jessie’s old rag doll. 

“Just before they parted, all standing about n 
the firelight, Miriam, with a little quiver in her 
clear voice, and a tender mist clouding her eyes, 
sang — the company listening to her with sympa- 
thetic hearts and some with moistened eyes : 

“Wherever a kind touch of healing falls soft on a wound or a 
woe, 

Wherever a peace or a pardon springs up to o’ermaster a foe, 
Wherever a soft hand of pity outreaches to succor a need. 
Wherever springs blessing for cursing, the Master is risen in- 
deed. 

“ Wherever a soul or a people, arousing in courage and might. 

To fling off the chains that have bound it, to spring from the 
dark to the light, 


54 


FROM FIOLLOW TO HILLTOP 


Wherever in sight of Clod’s legions, the armies of evil recede, 

And right wins a soul or a kingdom, the Master is risen indeed. 

“ So fling out your banners, brave toilers ; bring lilies to altar and 
shrine. 

Ring out, Easter bells ; he is risen ! for you is the token and 
sign. 

Love draws the world onward and (lodward. 

Ye are called to the front. Ye must lead. 

Mehind are the gloom and the shadow. The Master is risen 
indeed. ’ ’ 






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